Consistency in the Midst of Flux
First Congregational Church of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
Tenth Sunday after Pentecost – July 20, 2008
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[Texts: Romans 8:12-25/Matthew 13: 24-30, 36-43]

Has anyone been to see the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight? I saw it on Friday and – fear not – I’m not going to wreck the plot for anyone. I will tell you this, that underneath the special effects, a goodly amount of gore and some half-way decent acting here and there, there is a morality tale. At its root this film is about whether we human beings will follow that which we know to be right and good, regardless of what is coming at us, or give in to fear and the instinct of self-preservation. Will we resort to that which is evil when confronted with evil or do we rise above it and behave in a different manner? In short, this film is about consistency in the midst of flux – do we persist in what we profess to be or do we flow along with the currents of change?

It’s an old question and it is what Jesus takes on in the parable of the “weeds among the wheat.” This is one of the kingdom parables, when Jesus tells us that “the kingdom of God is like.” Here a farmer goes out and does a grand job sowing his fields. Night comes, rest is taken and an enemy commits an act of agricultural/eco-terrorism by sowing bearded darnel (for you botany folks, Lolium temulentum a type of rye grass that is plentiful in Syria and Palestine. Its seeds are a strong, soporific poison). This darnel/tares looks just like wheat as its growing. Only when the seeds come out does it show itself for what it actually is.

The word Jesus uses for seed here is spermaton, a term that is normally used not for seeds for plants, but for offspring, as in “the seed of Abraham.” As Jesus tells this parable he’s talking about those who are children of the kingdom; those Paul would say have been led by the Spirit to become children of God. This seed will come to flower and then produce good fruit because it has been sown by the teaching and example of Jesus. So, Jesus is talking, again, about how the children of God are to live in the midst of this world. How are we to deal with evil and injustice in the midst of daily life?

Well, the truth of the matter is that even though we may pray that the kingdom may come and that God’s will may be done everyday, many times we simply don’t act like it. Now, that the kingdom will come and God’s will accomplished – is a surety, because we live in the “already-but-not-yet” of it. Look at the disciples. They were right there with Jesus, sat at his feet, ate with him, walked with him, learned from him and what did they do? Sometimes they got it and other times they were just clueless. The flux we’re dealing with is humanity – we’re given to change – and our vacillation between wanting to be God’s children, wanting do God’s will and wanting to live appropriately and doing what we want. John Shea talks about it beautifully when he calls it the tension between “the Great Assurance and the Great Vacillation.”

This parable is, ultimately, about how we are to deal with evil and all its manifestations in the midst of daily life. We’re told that it is very often quite difficult to tell the weeds from the plants. As many of you know, I began my training and ministry in monastic life, and well, that involved work (Ora et labora – pray and work…). One day my work assignment was to help one of the brethren in the gardens. He told me to go weed. I asked him “weed what,” he laughed and told me that I’d know. Well, I didn’t and ended up “weeding,” read “pulling out,” a great deal of what he’d just planted a couple of weeks earlier. I couldn’t tell the difference. If we broaden the analogy, one of the complaints of our soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq is how do you tell the bad guys from the good guys? You can’t – at least, you can’t until they act. Jesus does say, “By their fruits you shall know them.” Evil is counterfeit, fake. Given time fakes show themselves for what they are. That which is of true value, that which is honest and good endures. And that’s the point of the farmer.

The consistency here is found in the farmer’s response, which reflects God’s approach to us. First, God’s will is to relationship. God wants to love and redeem that which God created – especially that which is after God’s own image and likeness. So, when the farmer’s servants ask if they ought to go right in and weed out the “bad seed,” he tells them no. Actually, he tells them “Aphete [let, permit, suffer] both to grow together until the harvest.” Now that may not seem like consistency to you and me, but when we get to the implications of aphete, I think we’ll see that it, pardon the pun, is consistent.

This word aphete comes from aphiemi and has two major meanings in the New Testament. The first is what we see in this parable, “send away, let go, leave, permit.” The second meaning of the word is really fascinating, however, and is what really shows us the consistency of God’s will to relationship in the midst of our human flux. Robert Farrar Capon (Episcopal priest and whimsically wonderful theologian) points out that: “. . . aphienai, when applied (via the Latin dimittere or remittere) to debts, trespasses, sins and so on, comes out in English as ‘forgive.’ A glance at a concordance shows how important this use is: in the King James Version, for example, forty-seven of the hundred-fifty-six occurrences of aphienai are translated by ‘forgive’ (the rest are Englished in various ways – with “leave,” in fifty-two places, as the commonest rendering).” [From The Parables of the Kingdom]

Why should we get excited about this rendering of a Greek word? Because the implications are huge. Bear with me for a moment and listen to Capon’s explanation of this, it’s golden. He writes: “This is crucial because, after all, it was upon authors writing in Greek and –upon a Christian community responding to their work in Greek – that the Spirit sent the guidance of his inspiration. Consider the present case of the aphete in the parable of the Weeds. A modern reader with access to nothing but English would see it translated as ‘Let both grow . . .’ and simply read on. But when that aphete was read in the early Christian church – say, during the liturgy on the Lord’s Day – it would have rung a very large bell in the congregation’s mind. They had just prayed (or shortly would pray) the Lord’s Prayer: ‘Aphes,’ they would have said, ‘Forgive us our debts, as we also aphiemen, forgive, our debtors.’ On hearing, therefore, that the farmer’s answer to the malice of the enemy was yet another aphete, they might well have grasped the Holy Spirit’s exalted pun immediately: the malice, the evil, the badness that is manifest in the real world and in the lives of real people is not to be dealt with by attacking or abolishing the things or persons in who it dwells; rather, it is to be dealt with only an aphesis, by a letting be that is a forgiveness, that is a suffering – that is even a permission—all rolled into one.”

It’s at once delightful and difficult, isn’t it? And that’s the point. God is consistent. God’s will is to love and to forgive and God will continue to do so. Jesus was absolutely consistent. What were his words on the cross? “Father, forgive them….” This goes right along with Paul telling the Romans that we are children of God, “….and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ – if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may be glorified with him.” Being a Christian isn’t a “get-out-of-hell-free” card, it’s about living life in identification with the life and teachings of Jesus. That means identifying with Jesus to the point that we forgive, as he says elsewhere, “seventy-times seven times” if that is what it takes to draw others into the loving embrace of the Creator God.

Now, that said: no, it’s not a license to sin. Heavens, you’ve got that already. Nor is it permission to do wrong, because, well, ditto. It’s this free-will thing that we humans have decided to use as license rather than the responsible gift it was meant to be. When the disciples press Jesus to explain the parable (another case of not getting it) he lets them know that in the eschaton, the end-times, there will be a judgment and evil, the fake, will get its due. However, nowhere in this parable or in its explanation does Jesus tell us that we get to be the judge. Sorry, that’s not our job. Actually, thank God it’s not our job, because given the record of history we’re not always the best judges of what constitutes good and evil, are we?

So, again, what is our job? To use the question posed in Ezekiel and echoed by rabbis and spiritual writers ever since: How then shall we live? We’re to live as the children of God. Which means that we are to live as Jesus did modeling lives of goodness and forgiveness. We have to constantly remind ourselves that in the midst of flux, the vacillation of humanity and our world, there is one consistency: God’s will to saving relationship. We live consistency in the midst of flux by living loving lives of forgiveness in the midst and even in the face of evil. We’re not going to eradicate evil and that’s not our job. Our job is to keep sowing the seed, to keep forgiving, to keep making a difference and in that way bear the fruit of the good seed that God has planted.

Someone once commented that I don’t take up the issues of the day, but only deal with them as “drive-by prayers.” Obviously someone hasn’t been listening. Because I do take up the issues of the day, I just won’t enter into the political arena since I am not a politician, but a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I believe with all my heart what Jesus taught – that God loves us and wants this world God created to be renewed. So, I preach to the problems and situations of our day as a theologian, not as a politician. I believe that if we can change the human heart human society will follow. So, I will preach about the love of God. I will preach about the common good. I will preach about making a difference. And I will ask again and again: how shall we then live? I will do that because that’s my call. If you want political commentary, tune in someone else.

So, how do we live consistency in the midst of flux? By living as Jesus did. Consistency in the midst of flux is: aphete. Just as we prayed at the outset of the service we pray and work for the coming of the kingdom and the doing of God’s will here on earth just as it is in heaven. And we live and remember forgive us our debts AS WE FORGIVE our debtors. If we live this way, it will make a difference. G. K. Chesterton wrote, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” It may not be the stuff of The Dark Knight, but it can change the world, one person at a time. Shall we try it this week and discover consistency in the midst of flux?